Chapter 6 One: They Found A Dead Boy

'Whispers'

'Echoes'

'Screams'

The torture was great; the pain cut deep. Darkness was everywhere, time was not to be counted for. The world, perhaps, was created from darkness. It was evident. The panics, the creeps, the shuddering. A cold shiver trickled down his frail spine. The voices Gregory heard were nothing less disturbing than his parents' bickering. His legs were on a marathon, his heart pounded so loudly that if someone were close to him, the person would hear it as twice as it would be heard on a stethoscope, his brain was not functioning properly to tell him what his next step should be. This probably would be his worst decision ever. His suicidal plans failed; he was well alive but practically in a place he imagined being hell. He thought he had died and was in hell – a hell of ice and storm.

It was like a tunnel, an endless tunnel. He didn't know how long he had been there, neither did he know how he looked. He had been trapped. A little bit of light only stroked each time there was a flash of lightning: he could see their faces better then. So terrifying, so grotesque, so monstrous. They weren't instantaneous, it was impossible to feel them. It looked like their bodies were covered in mud on one half, while the other half was stiffened like that of dead bodies. They looked like zombies but weren't. He had seen many movies featuring zombies and could tell the difference. He sometimes wished they were zombies. Their voices hurt – the whispering, the crying, the screaming – not one, not two, not a thousand. They were countless. They kept talking, and Gregory kept wailing in pain. Death seemed very wicked to have left him to die. So much trauma for a boy of his age who was meant to be under the care and support of loving parents.

The more they talked, the worse his pains got. They spoke in a language he couldn't understand. Everything they said was directed at him. Seemed like his presence there caused an altercation among them or an environment of excitement. He couldn't tell. But their speech made him weak and caused pain. It felt like his skin had been shriveled. However, he ended up in the paradise of doom. He'd never believed hell to be a real place where people went after life, but in a terrible situation, people found themselves on Earth. That was a perfect example of hell.

"There's light at the end of every tunnel," he kept repeating to himself as he kept running forward. He never tried to stop. Gravity would lose its force the moment he decided to stop, and the torture would be at its peak. He saw an insect with light – more like a firefly. It flew alongside him as though they were running a race. It kept moving and getting faster and faster, he no longer felt as much pain as he did before, and the voices kept their peace. There's light at the end of every tunnel. The fly ran before him and created a wide passage in which he could see light. With every second, the passage got smaller, and the forces became more visible, felt, and clenching. They tried to hold him back from moving. He fell. Gravity lost it, as he thought. Then the sinking began. He was weightless, and the passage was closing, but the forces kept holding him back.

He sank to the depth; the passage continuously closed. He didn't want to be left in the hellhole. He wanted to see the light, but he had to struggle. His last breath would be worth counting on. Grabbing courage, he stood on his feet regardless of the depth he had sunk and jumped into the last particle of light he could find.

…

His ribs and spine cracked when he landed on the shrubs. He wanted to scream, but he had been through much worse and had only seen this as a little. Struck, he turned around to find the portal or passage from which he came from. He did not find it – it turned out that he had fallen from the sky and was momentarily inactive during the event. The place was thick bush. He had no idea where he was. It looked like the Osinku forest, but long before the clearing and trimming of trees. A noise from one of the trees was made. It was a monkey. To his surprise, the monkey didn't look like any other monkey he had seen. It was rather way too hairy and had a very long mouth, its eyes were almost entirely covered in hair. Soon after, there were many more monkeys of the same kind running towards the east. Maybe they escaped from a nearby predator. He started running towards them, but he saw a big snake – big enough to swallow him in at once. He paused and tried to be quiet for some time and waited for the snake to recoil back into its hole.

Behind him, he could hear footsteps. He started running with little thought of anything behind him or before him awaiting. The creature began running behind him as well. Unlike many other mammals, where the number of stamps heard at each jump was four, it was the same as his. Maybe a gorilla or an ape, he hoped. He didn't know how it happened: he tripped and fell on his face and his legs were tied up. The creature raised his face, pulling his hair, and he was struck to find out that it was a human. The human put a stick at his throat in a pointed way, as if he wanted to kill Gregory.

"No! No! No!" Gregory shrieked, not knowing when it escaped his throat.

The human dropped him, stepped back a little, and began to shout something in a language Gregory did not know. Soon after, people that looked like hominids, but a little more evolved, began popping out from different directions – three of them, probably hunters. They covered only their private region with a small cloth made from palm fronds. On seeing him, they were both astonished and scared. They felt his hair and the jacket he wore. His trousers were at a higher level than them. He wasn't putting on footwear or else they could have left him there, thinking that the footwear would make him fly. The weird reactions they made seeing these things amused him; he forgot that he was in no safe place. They spoke to each other in an unknown language.

"It looks like the others," the first one said. "The hair and those things he's wearing."

"It's a curse to the town," the one that found him said. "We must take it to Hadi," he added, dragging Gregory up, "Hadi knows what's best for it."

"Is it he or she?" another asked. The one that pulled Gregory by the head looked at his face for confirmation. "Must be a boy. This one is not yet mature for initiation," the one that held him said. Gregory didn't understand what was going on. He asked them in English, but they were unable to hear him and sometimes moved away from him. He felt their conversation was a result of the surprise.

"We cannot take him to Hadi," the last and the quietest said, "He's a young lad. Hadi will kill him." All of them turned around to look at the man, including Gregory holding up the same irritated expression as they did. "Hadi would never spare him; he could be a blessing to the land…" Before he could finish talking, the one that held Gregory had stabbed him from the back.

"Hadi is a man of honor and integrity. He makes the right decisions and would never back down. People like you ought to be wiped from the surface of the earth," the man who held Gregory said and spat on him before continuing to stab him to make sure he was dead.

Gregory had just witnessed a life-threateningmurder and knew that he was in for something much worse. They were taking him to the Hadi, who drank blood and ate human flesh every day. It was known throughout the village that he killed an average of twenty humans per day for his satisfaction. The rest of the hunters that were there kept quiet and unastonished, as if nothing serious had happened. They continued walking in a long direction, having a conversation accompanied by a peal of laughter. Gregory was in for a rough ride. He didn't know whether he was dead or alive, or about to be killed.